Aerial photo taken on Feb. 24, 2020 shows the Haizhu wetland and the Canton Tower in the distance in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province. (Photo by Xie Huiqiang/Xinhua)
BEIJING, July 1 (Xinhua) -- China's Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) has long been injecting vitality into the regional economy by innovation.
According to the Global Innovation Index 2021, which was released by the World Intellectual Property Organization recently, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou science and technology (S&T) cluster has ranked second for two consecutive years among the top S&T clusters, following the Tokyo-Yokohama cluster in Japan.
-- Innovative development gains steady foothold
Innovation has become the core engine driving the high-quality development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
According to the data from China's Ministry of Science and Technology, in 2021, the total R&D expenditure of nine cities in Guangdong, part of the Greater Bay Area, is expected to exceed 360 billion yuan, with the R&D investment intensity expected to stand at 3.7 percent.
Meanwhile, a number of technological innovation platforms including Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City, Guangming Science City in Shenzhen, and the Traditional Chinese Medicine Science and Technology Industrial Park of Co-operation between Guangdong and Macao, have been established to promote higher level of industrial innovation in the region.
As a typical industry in the region, the biomedical industry has gained innovative development and become a name card of the Greater Bay Area.
Guangzhou Development District, a part of the Greater Bay Area, has attracted more than 3,000 biopharmaceutical enterprises, including 467 high-tech ones and 17 listed ones since 2017, with the industry revenue exceeding 170 billion yuan.
-- Innovation environment constantly optimized
The Greater Bay Area has continuously optimized its innovation environment, not only in improving working conditions for innovation, but also in cultivating a systematic innovation ecosystem.
Based on Midea Global Innovation Center which can accept more than 10,000 R&D personnel, Shunde District of Foshan City, Guangdong Province, plans to build a larger innovation zone, serving industries including smart home appliances, industrial design, exhibition, and scientific and technological services.
"To foster a first-class innovation ecosystem, it is necessary to cultivate an open culture, a spirit of risk appetite and an inclusive attitude by reshaping social and economic networks, enterprise practices and the overall organizational ecology of the economy, and create an innovative organizational system and ecosystem," said Chen Guanghan, a professor with Sun Yat-sen University.
In recent years, a series of policies on encouraging scientific and technological innovation, assisting science and innovation industries, and supporting high-tech enterprises, have sprung up all over the cities of the Greater Bay Area.
-- Source of innovation taking shape
Driven by the goal of building the Greater Bay Area into an international science and technology innovation center with global influence, the region has become a global science and technology innovation highland and an important source of emerging industries.
The Greater Bay Area has attracted many universities, including Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) in Nansha, Great Bay University (Songshan Lake Campus) in Dongguan, Shenzhen MSU-BIT University, Sun Yat-sen University (Shenzhen) and Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, to boost the sci-tech innovation.
In addition, the region has established 2 national laboratories, 30 state key laboratories and 20 Hong Kong-Macao joint laboratories.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has laid out a number of major science and technology infrastructure and innovation platforms in the Greater Bay Area, said Chen Guanghao, president of the CAS Guangzhou Branch, adding that a major science and technology infrastructure cluster is taking shape.
In the future, the Greater Bay Area will build a high-level and multi-tier laboratory system consisting of provincial laboratories, state key laboratories, provincial key laboratories, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao joint laboratories, and Belt and Road (B&R) joint laboratories, so as to continuously enhance the region's innovation capacity.
(Edited by Jiang Feifan with Xinhua Silk Road, 346129473@qq.com)
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